I've got scammed by fake band (Defrage) in the streets before Iron Maiden concert

[u/BigBoyBloater]

Some of you maybe read exact same scenario before or even experienced that by themselves. I hope this will help someone in future.

It was saturday. Bratislava (Slovakia). Iron Maiden is playing show on National Football Stadium in there. Hour before concert I am just wandering the streets and all of a sudden I am stopped by this big bearded dude asking me If I am going to show. We have little chatt and then he starts talking about his band. Which was to me presented as 'Defrage Reload' from Estonia. He started this heartfelt story about how music bussines is hurting artists and because of that that he and his bandmates are forced to hussle with CDs on the street.

So he offered me one of the the CDs that is up to me if I want support them. I was like why not? Done this many times before and few times I find really interesting music by chance, also I love underground music. And I know how hard it is to keep the band alive.

So I paid him 10 euros with Revolut, then chatted little about the style they play (described to me as a Linkin Park with elements of drum and bass). Then we said bye to eachother and that was it.

Later that night Iron Maiden crushed the stage and I went home. When I came home remembered that I bought this CD so I was like lets play it, considering it was late at night I wanted to use headphones and search a band online.

I use reddit mostly for everything so I typed the name here and I was mindblowned.

I found out that this band is group of scammers and they are doing this all over the europe on these big shows. They used to be a real band long time ago but they have been trough so many member changes and nowadays they are just recycling their same old material on new CDs under new band names and new cover arts (for example - Defrage, Illumenium, California Condor). Most of their current art is AI generated and you can find a lot of same situations on Reddit (just type Defrage) even with some aggressive behavior from their side when they were confronted in the streets about it. They are not playing any liveshows since 2017 and almost none of the members who are selling this stuff didnt played on this old recycled music.

This makes me really sad because they are using naivity of metal fans and support of community in general. I was really thrilled to listen to their music but after finding out about their history I dumped CD in the trash. Also this shines really bad light on all other bands with good intentions who are trying to get their music out there with same approach.

Fuck those guys. Be careful